


they say we are what we are

by TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Boy-Who-Lived Tom Riddle, Dark Lord Harry Potter, Gen, Harry is much older, Master of Death Harry Potter, Role-Reversal, Soul Bond, Tom is eleven, Worldbuilding, there are no ships here, this is pure gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 13:23:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18605401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel/pseuds/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Summary: In which the Boy-Who-Lived, Tom Riddle, encounters the Dark Lord he supposedly defeated - Harry Potter, the Master of Death.





	they say we are what we are

** they say we are what we are **

In the weeks that followed his Sorting into Slytherin, Tom learned a great many things.

The wizarding world was a complicated, nonsensical place, and just as terrifying as it was wonderful. For every ‘fun’ ability like broom-flight, there were dark curses and love potions and the Unforgivables, the last of which warranted a category all of their own. 

The magical world was a wilder, more frightening place than the muggle one, in some ways, and for all that Tom loved it with all his black little heart, he also knew that it was dangerous in ways he was ill-equipped to understand. Hence the endless studying that people like Malfoy and Parkinson complained about.

But it was the Dark Lord that he had supposedly vanquished which fascinated Tom the most. Tom soaked up all the scraps of information he could: from his peers, from his teachers, and when he found both of those options lacking, from the books in the school library. Harry Potter, the champion of the muggleborns, who had done his best to change wizarding society so that purebloods and muggleborns were seen as equals – and had nearly destroyed it in the process. 

The parallels between Tom and the Dark Lord were, to Tom, both striking and vaguely unsettling. Both of them were halfbloods, by wizarding society’s reckoning; both had been raised by muggles, although while Tom had grown up with his so-called _family_ , the Dark Lord had spent his formative years in a muggle orphanage – and a muggle orphanage in 1940s war-torn London, no less. Tom was no keen student of history, but he was educated enough to know that muggle orphanages in the past had been unforgiving places at best, and orphanages during the Blitz probably even more so.

But it went deeper than blood-status. Harry Potter had been most accomplished at duelling and Defence Against the Dark Arts, when he was a student at Hogwarts; he’d won trophies in the now-defunct school Duelling Club, and by all accounts had gone on to become a formidable fighter. He had been described as _disarmingly charming_ by his contemporaries, a label which could have applied just as easily to Tom. 

Then there was the physical resemblance. In the early photographs Tom managed to find in the school’s only copy of _Rise of a Dark Lord: the early life of Harry James Potter_ , the young Dark Lord had been a thin, pale boy with a thoughtful look to his countenance. He’d had jet-black hair much like Tom’s own, only the Dark Lord’s was a riotous mess that Aunt Elizabeth would never have tolerated. In the later photographs, however, his hair had been tamed into something more presentable, and the thin boy had turned into a formidable young man with a panther-like prowl and an expression of ruthless determination.

Tom read _Rise of a Dark Lord_ from cover to cover every night until he finished it, the curtains around his bed pulled closed so that no one could see the light from his wand as he used it to read by. The information on the Dark Lord’s early life was rich and detailed, drawing on muggle and magical records, interviews with old school-mates and former teachers, and the Dark Lord’s own public statements to fill out its fascinating narrative. 

After graduating from Hogwarts, the Dark Lord had worked at Quality Quidditch Supplies in Diagon Alley for a few years. He had no need of money thanks to the family fortune he’d been able to access from the moment he first stepped foot in Gringotts, but he’d chosen to work anyway. 

Tom could understand that: some people might want to laze around all day and do nothing, but Tom had _ambition_. And, working in a store like Quality Quidditch Supplies, Potter had probably met all kinds of interesting and influential people, even if at first glance it seemed like a strange place of employment for a burgeoning Dark Lord.

But aside from working at the Quidditch supply store, no one seemed to know exactly what the Dark Lord had been up to during that time, although in retrospect he had obviously been acquiring followers; not that Potter ever used that word. 

_ Supporters _ , he’d termed them, a very innocuous-sounding turn of phrase for people who had committed all kinds of crimes in Potter’s name. 

After a couple of years the Dark Lord had quit working at Quality Quidditch Supplies, and that was where the solidly-researched portion of the book moved into the field of conjecture. It was during this mysterious time period in Potter’s life that he had begun calling himself by his new, self-applied title of _Master of Death_. Exactly what that title signified, no one knew for sure; although the author of _Rise of a Dark Lord_ had some interesting theories, relating to old wizarding myths and legends that most people had long forgotten. 

Tom had borrowed _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_ from the library shortly afterwards, and had read the chapter which told the _Tale of the Three Brothers_. He wondered how much of it was true. The idea of the anthropomorphic personification of Death itself gifting powerful magical artefacts to a group of wizards seemed a little too ridiculous to be real, and yet… 

Tom was now living in a magical, half-sentient castle, learning to be a wizard. He saw impossible feats performed every day, and no one else so much as blinked, accepting them as ordinary and unremarkable. Who was to say that the old story of Death and the three brothers wasn’t true, at least a little?

Personally, Tom found the idea of Death as a self-aware, intelligent entity interfering in the lives of mortals to be exceptionally terrifying, and he was willing to admit that it kept him up at night sometimes. But the notion only served to increase his fascination with the Dark Lord, because if the old stories were true – _what_ , exactly, had Potter become? And more importantly, _how?_

Tom desperately wanted to know, just as much as he wanted to know why he’d lived that night, when the Dark Lord had accidentally very nearly killed him, and had instead been killed by his own backfired spell. Assuming, of course, that the assumption of most of his fellow wizards was correct, and Potter _was_ _dead_.

Tom wasn’t sure about that at all. Honestly – a man who called himself the _Master of Death?_ A Dark Lord who had done who-knew-what, and who probably _knew_ who-knew what, and who had shown himself capable of doing almost anything if it meant the rights and freedoms of his chosen people? That was the kind of person, Tom was sure, who could have found a way around the curse of mortality – if anyone could.

So no, Tom didn’t believe the Dark Lord was dead, and it was added to his mental _List of_ _Things I Shouldn’t Mention To Anyone Else_. Also added to the list was the fact that Tom was a Parselmouth.

Once, according to the books in the library, being able to speak Parseltongue had been considered a great and benevolent gift, and the mark of someone with an intuitive gift for healing spells. In Greek and Roman times it had even been considered a mark of favour by Asclepius, the God of Healing. The forefather of Tom’s family line, Salazar Slytherin, had been famous for the ability, and it had been cherished by each generation right down to Tom’s Mother, apparently.

But that was before the Master of Death had come onto the scene, wielding the ability in a way that put Tom more in mind of the Devil of Christian theology than the Greco-Roman god Asclepius, and Parseltongue had become a gift tinged with darkness and suspicion. 

But then, Tom was used to keeping things close to his chest, after growing up with Aunt Elizabeth. One more secret to keep didn’t bother him. Of course, anyone with a brain would remember that all his family had been Parselmouths, and assume that he was one as well, but most people didn’t fall into that category, in Tom’s experience.

When he wasn’t reading up on the Dark Lord, or trying frantically to expand his knowledge base, Tom busied himself with ingratiating himself with the other students or exploring the castle. The former wasn’t difficult; given that he’d defeated the Dark Lord and was the last member of the direct line of as ancient and prestigious a line as Slytherin, most people were impressed by him despite his halfblood status. 

Tom worked on cultivating an image of someone who was good-natured, mildly intelligent, and easy to get along with; someone who was kind enough to feel pity for muggleborns, but who had the _good breeding_ , as Malfoy would say, to recognise their place in wizarding society.

Tom was used to twisting himself into all kinds of different shapes, personality-wise, to get what he wanted. Even so, everything that he’d been told about the pureblood-halfblood-muggleborn social hierarchy made something burn in his chest. Because while Tom himself was exempt from the purebloods’ contempt, being the Boy-Who-Lived and the Heir of Slytherin… he was nonetheless well-aware that no matter what his actual blood status, in terms of upbringing and culture and education, he might as well be one of the muggleborns.

Every time one of the pureblood students sneered at a muggleborn, or called them _mudbloods_ and spat at their feet, or (if they considered themselves liberal and progressive) made patronising comments about how some muggleborns ‘ _always_ _tried so hard, really, you’d hardly even know they were muggleborn_ …’ 

Every time, Tom knew that they were talking about people just like him, and was forced to swallow down his resentment and fury. 

When Professor McGonagall had told him all about the wizarding world, he hadn’t expected to feel as much of a cuckoo-child inside it as he did in the muggle world. But he did. And much as he loved the wizarding world, there were times… even though he knew that to say it aloud would be asking for trouble… that he wondered if maybe the Dark Lord hadn’t had the right idea.

And wouldn’t it be ironic, Tom thought, staring pensively down at the photo of the Master of Death that decorated the last page of _Rise of a Dark Lord_ , if the child that had vanquished him grew up to pursue the same cause?

Tom carefully tucked that thought away for later contemplation.

* * *

Tom had the first of the dreams on Christmas Eve.

He’d chosen to stay at Hogwarts for the holiday, even though most of the other students went home. The prospect of not having to deal with Aunt Elizabeth until the end of term left him feeling rather more cheerful than usual.

It wouldn’t last.

The night before Christmas, Tom went to bed early. He was the only person in his dorm who had chosen to stay at Hogwarts, and he was looking forward to getting a good night’s sleep without listening to Zabini’s snores.

The next thing he knew, he was in his bedroom at home, sitting with his legs hanging off the edge of the bed and the library’s copy of _Rise of a Dark Lord_ resting in his lap, opened to the first chapter. There was something wrong with that, and a second later Tom realised what it was: Aunt Elizabeth would never have let him read something _magical_ in her house. Heaven forbid.

At just about the time Tom realised he was dreaming, a voice spoke.

“Interesting reading material,” said the voice, and when Tom looked up, the Master of Death was sitting in the chair by Tom’s desk, smiling a small, wry smile.

Tom’s hand went to his wand holster, because while this might be a dream, he had no doubt that the Dark Lord was very real, and because he was smart and put things together quickly Tom also knew this meant that the Dark Lord was also very possibly _in his head_.

The Master of Death raised his hands in a _don’t shoot_ gesture, looking vaguely alarmed.

“ _You_ ,” said Tom, and for the life of him didn’t know whether to be delighted, furious or terrified. But even as he had that thought, a kind of deadly calm overtook him, lending him a new level of clarity. He didn’t lower his wand.

“I’m just here to talk, I swear,” said Potter, eyeing the wand warily. 

Several things coalesced inside Tom’s mind at once: the fact that he still admired this man in spite of everything, the fact that this was _Tom’s_ dream which probably meant that he was in control, and the fact that it was the Dark Lord’s fault that Tom had grown up with Aunt Elizabeth, isolated and unloved.

His grip tightened around his wand.

“Your actions killed my Mother,” said Tom, with a hiss. “You’re the reason I grew up with someone who hated me, all because of what my Mother did to my Father. Why would I want to talk to _you?_ ”

The Master of Death looked pointedly at the copy of _Rise of a Dark Lord_ that had fallen to the floor when Tom had leapt to his feet.

Tom scowled.

“That doesn’t make what I said any less accurate.”

To Tom’s surprise and bafflement, the Dark Lord’s shoulder’s sagged. He sighed, and then – and Tom outright stared, this time – rubbed a weary hand over his face as though he was tired of everything.

“Yeah, alright, that’s fair,” said the Dark Lord. 

Despite the fact that he wore the face of a twenty-year-old, he suddenly looked far older. It was the haunted expression in his eyes. 

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry you grew up the way you did. That you’ve lived the same kind of life I did. It’s not what I planned – well, _obviously_ , or we wouldn’t be talking like this, in your dreams. But I always planned for you to be raised by people who would care for you.” 

The Master of Death’s expression was earnest, and he was leaning forward in his chair as though desperate to convince Tom of his sincerity. He looked… sad.

“But you still would have killed my Mother,” said Tom, because he knew it was true. “There was no version of events where that wouldn’t have happened.”

If anything, the Master of Death’s expression grew sadder still.

“I _had_ to. She could have ruined everything – and she refused to be persuaded, to see that the way muggleborns are treated is _wrong_.” There was conviction in the Dark Lord’s voice, alongside the sadness.

Tom’s thoughts were churning. He stayed silent, unsure of what to say.

It did him no good.

“Don’t tell me you don’t understand,” said the Master of Death – softly, persuasively, and with uncanny perceptiveness. 

“You know that it’s true. That particular truth resonates down to the marrow in your bones, doesn’t it? Tell me: how does it feel to live with that truth, Tom Riddle? How many times have you swallowed down your pride and your anger at the way they treat people who are just like you, all to avoid upsetting the apple-cart?” 

Potter’s green eyes glinted. Tom couldn’t look away as the Dark Lord finished his little speech with the words:

“And how badly did it _burn?_ ”

A beat passed. Tom exhaled, and broke their shared gaze. His stomach still roiled with anger, but he could admit – grudgingly – that the Dark Lord was right. He’d known that from the moment he’d first heard of the man’s political stance. It was part of why he so admired him.

“Fine,” Tom rapped out, and sat down on the edge of his bed again, wand lowered. “You can talk.”

“Thank you,” said the Dark Lord, looking perfectly composed again, all weariness gone. He sent Tom an amicable grin. 

Tom was left wondering which of those emotions – the amicability, or the weariness – was real, and which was the facade. If, somehow, both of them could be real at the same time.

“Very good,” said the Master of Death, smiling, and with a thrill of horror Tom realised that the Dark Lord was reading his thoughts. “And I’m not exactly reading them – it’s more like you’re shouting them at me. With your mind.”

Tom glared furiously.

“Stop _reading my mind_ ,” he ordered. “I don’t care how you’re doing it. _Stop_.”

The Dark Lord looked vaguely apologetic.

“I’m afraid that’s something only you can control,” he said. “But – hmm. Let’s see. Have you ever heard of Occlumency?”

Still glaring, Tom shook his head.

“It’s the art of defending your mind from outside intrusions,” said Potter. “There’s a book in Hogwarts’ library – or there used to be, at any rate – called _Guide to Advanced Occlumency_. You should read it. Apart from anything else, it’ll teach you to keep Dumbledore and Snape from looking through your thoughts. In the meantime, avoid meeting their eyes. Eye contact makes reading someone’s mind easier.”

Tom stared at the Dark Lord in even more horror than before at the idea that his teachers might be _reading his mind_. The Master of Death smiled grimly.

“I know,” he said. “I felt much the same way when I found out.”

“Shouldn’t that be illegal?” asked Tom.

“Should be,” the Dark Lord agreed. “But then, there are a lot of things which should be illegal in the wizarding world, which aren’t – as you well know.”

Tom flushed at the coy reminder of what his Mother had done to his Father with love potions. As always, it made him angry.

“Shut up! You think I don’t get reminded of that often enough? I _know_ my Mother used love potions on my Father! I know it was a – a violation! But none of that was _me_.”

The Master of Death only looked at him, a faint smile on his lips.

“Good,” he said, surprising Tom. “As long as you can keep that straight inside your head. You’ll find that people are going to blame you for all kinds of things which aren’t your doing, and your only chance of survival is to know that none of them are your responsibility.”

Tom scowled in resentment.

“You think I don’t know that? I grew up with _Aunt Elizabeth_. The only reason she doesn’t treat me even worse than she does now is that she loves me for being all that’s left of her brother, even more than she hates me for being part of the world that hurt him.”

The Dark Lord’s expression turned pensive.

“You’re very insightful for a child your age, you know.”

“I know,” said Tom. “Now stop drawing this out and get to the point!”

The Master of Death only looked at him in silence for a long moment.

“Fine,” he finally said. “You must be wondering why I chose to appear to you, of all people.”

Tom nodded, his eagerness for knowledge battling with his usual innate suspicion.

Potter sighed.

“It all comes back to Merope Riddle, of course. She’s the reason I was there that night, and she is the reason we are linked, now.”

“ _Linked?_ ” Tom demanded, as swift as a striking snake.

The Dark Lord waved a dismissive hand.

“I’ll get to that,” he said, and continued telling the story the way he wanted to tell it.

Tom settled down to listen, putting aside his many questions for later.

“Your mother, in addition to being brilliant and unscrupulous in the potions department, was remarkably good with runic spells,” said the Master of Death. 

He’d taken on a light, conversational tone, as though this was a discussion of something of no more importance than the weather. Only the way he twirled his wand absently in one hand gave away any clue as to what he was feeling. 

Tom’s eyes followed the movement, and he tried not to shiver as he realised that the Dark Lord’s mannerism was one Tom had performed a dozen times himself, when he was feeling anxious or apprehensive and didn’t want to show it. He wasn’t sure why this tiny similarity was important, but it struck some kind of uneasy chord within him.

He shook his head to dislodge those thoughts, and paid attention to the Dark Lord’s tale.

“As I’m sure you know, a lot of the traditional rituals involve runic spells – many of them classified as Dark Magic by the Ministry,” said the Dark Lord, who had reason to know. “Your mother grew up steeped in the darkest of magics, a blind eye turned because of the prestige of her family, and she herself had no hesitation in using that kind of magic. That is fact.”

The Dark Lord rubbed the back of his neck.

“From here on, though, everything is speculation on my part – although I’m pretty sure I’m right.”

“Isn’t that one of the defining features of a Dark Lord?” Tom asked before he could stop himself, and was startled when Potter laughed.

“Point, I guess. Anyway, I tried to kill your mother, but the spell accidentally hit you, instead – and that was where everything went wrong.”

“Mother had used some kind of protective ritual on me, hadn’t she?” asked Tom.

The Master of Death nodded.

“That’s my guess. Something dark and forbidden and powerful. Anyway, the backlash was enough to kill your mother and level half the house – and if circumstances had been different, it would have killed me too.”

“Master of Death isn’t just a made-up name, is it?” asked Tom quietly, leaning forward.

The Master of Death grinned at him.

“All names are made-up. But no, you’re right.” The Dark Lord’s smile turned rueful. “The Master of Death is a title I was granted, not one I made up.” 

He sat back in his seat, linking his hands behind his head. 

“To be honest, I never really wanted immortality – but I knew, all too well, the lengths that the purebloods would go to in order to stop me, and I wasn’t going to let them do it until I’d finished what I’d set out to do.”

There was a flash of the same blazing determination which Tom had seen in later photographs of the Dark Lord, but then the man’s expression smoothed out, and he continued his explanation.

“Because of the title I hold, I cannot truly die. Unfortunately,” and the Master of Death looked unexpectedly sheepish, “my body was destroyed in the spell backlash, which means I’m stuck wandering in the Realm of the Dead and can’t return to the living world without help.”

His eyes met Tom’s, and Tom experienced a rush of understanding.

“You want me to help you,” he said flatly. The Master of Death nodded.

“You’re the only one I can talk to like this,” he agreed, “and since either my supporters don’t know how to restore me, or don’t care to do so… let’s just say, _Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope_.” A disarming smile.

But Tom wasn’t born yesterday, even if the film reference did throw him off-balance a bit. His eyes narrowed.

“Why can you only talk to me, and no one else? You mentioned a link between us.”

The Dark Lord nodded, his amiable expression belied by the glint in his green eyes.

“The ritual your mother used was Life Magic,” he said simply. “I’m the Master of Death. Life Magic and Death Magic are… intertwined, in ways which are difficult to describe. They tend to lock onto each other and combine, sometimes unpredictably. When the Life Magic ritual protected you and nearly killed me, my Death Magic, it… well…” For the first time, Potter looked uncomfortable.

Tom waited, even though he was on tenterhooks.

“It bound us together,” said the Master of Death finally. “In a way which can barely be explained, even by me. Effectively, we have a soul-bond.” He grimaced slightly.

Dignity was entirely forgotten. Tom gaped at the Dark Lord.

“A… soul-bond? But – that’s a _myth!_ ”

“I wish it was,” said the Dark Lord, making another face. “Well, not really, as I’d be stuck forever in the realm of the dead otherwise, but the form my potential for resurrection has taken is _not_ the path I would have chosen.”

“Why not?” asked Tom, feeling the stirrings of indignation. The Dark Lord blinked.

“What?”

“Why not?” Tom repeated. “What’s wrong with sharing a soul-bond with me?”

The Master of Death stared at him.

“It’s… inconvenient,” the Dark Lord said eventually, still staring. “Are you saying you _want_ to be soul-bound to me?”

“Well, not exactly.” Tom narrowed his eyes at the Master of Death. “But if we both want the same things, doesn’t that make it easier to… well… trust each other?”

He didn’t expect the way the Dark Lord’s expression shuttered at his words.

“I don’t _trust_ ,” the Dark Lord bit out, with such anger and bitterness in his tone that even Tom, who was hardly unfamiliar with those emotions, was left feeling a little stunned.

But the next moment the Master of Death took a deep breath and let it out again, shaking his head.

“Sorry,” he said to Tom, in a gentler voice than before. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. But I meant what I said.”

Tom recovered from his shock enough to send the man a calculating glance.

“I need to think about this,” he told the Master of Death.

Something which looked like a hint of alarm flickered over the Dark Lord’s face.

“Wait–” he said, stepping forward. But Tom was already pinching his own arm hard enough to bruise, willing himself to wake up.

Tom surfaced from the depths of sleep with a gasp, scrabbling to sit up. A moment later he threw open the hangings of his four-poster bed, and sighed in relief as he recognised that he was alone in his dorm at Hogwarts.

Tom collapsed back onto his pillows, his mind whirling. So the Dark Lord wasn’t dead. That was good information to know. Tom had already suspected it, even if he hadn’t expected to have his suspicions confirmed in this way. That the Master of Death and Tom apparently had a… _soul-bond_ … was rather more disturbing – assuming that he had been telling the truth, of course. 

But Tom rather thought he had been. Tom was _good_ at telling when people were lying to him – had to be, after his upbringing – and while the Master of Death hadn’t told him everything, he was pretty sure that everything that the man _had_ told him was the truth.

He probably didn’t want to risk alienating Tom with misinformation, and losing his only chance at returning to the land of the living. But also, Tom had the funny feeling that the Dark Lord believed that lying to him… wouldn’t be _fair_.

Tom didn’t know how to feel about any of this. 

With a sigh he rolled onto his side, curling into a more comfortable position. He should probably try to get to sleep, and think about all of this in the morning, when his feelings and thoughts would be clearer.

The only thing Tom knew for sure, right now, was that he’d just been plunged into the kind of intrigue he’d desperately been hoping to avoid – and something told him that, no matter what his decision was, his world was never going to be the same.

**Author's Note:**

> _At this point, I have no plans to write more._


End file.
